The Arkansaw traveler., 1887-08-06
AMONG HUMORISTS.
ny GEORGE ALFRED rowNsENp.

mired. In almost every new spapei office Is some ono ambitious of rccog milton in that line. Generally speak ing. no man can be humorist who |, not something else besides; humor ought to be the delicate conception al incongruous but pleasant things Whoever can extract from a weed a curious new perfume for tho toilet must be delicate chemist, and h, whe can find humor amidst the truth and the facts of life should have both a sensible and kind nature.
 The United States has perhaps OK - cclled lin humor more than in other literary forms; one nurturing place for it has been the newspaper offices, This often arises from the society the ill-p paid writer is thrown into about and outside of his newspaper desk,
 Artemas Ward was printer whose habits became spoiled, and he found 1t hard to set type and make money. He was too much about the ale houses and before the taverns exchanging jokes to be pushing little types into a form 80 he graduated at last hu- morist in newspaper which hardly made $3,000 year for its proprietor.
 His pieces were taken up and cop jed. and speedily the whole laml which had just time enough to read n short joke, began to be interested. He looked around for some way of mak ing \ living by his humor. No great man ill the government could do any . thing for him; 10 put humorist in- to n public office would be thought the destruction Of the state. Our gov ernmcnt would neither have poets, hunorists nor any other description of men of native powers. It is the rawcst government in spite of It's size on the face of the globe.
 So Artcmas Ward had to come to New York, where some printer or iobber thought there was "moncy in him." They Set up comic paper and managed to pay Il salary such ns n hundred men on newspapers HOW re- ceive, not enough to let him hold his own amongst the innumcrnblc loiter- CTS who wanted 10 make his aequaint- . ance and occupy his time. The com ic paper soon expired, and now Ward resolved to bc showmnn-to go through the country with n panorama and stand before 1t and exhibit him. self and his jokes nt so much head.
 This was degrading situation for man who really waf read with great appreciation by his times. but there was no help for Ii. Our couD- try afforded no other sustenancc for fl man who might become "A grotesquc in our literature as Rabelais or Ger vantes. So like A snowman Artemas Ward drifted up and down, forming no plans for the future, only wonder ing how he could get rich, and 70 in another country than ours, where there was some reward for humor and literature, he passed away.
 A more thrifty person WAS Josh Billings. He was an auctioneer in the country parts of New York state, who had tried all sorts of things and continued to be poor. He thought he said humorous things and wise ones too, but somehow nobody else could see them.
 Observing Artcmas Ward to mis- spell all his humorous articles, Josh Billings undertook the same with one of his.
 Immediately 1t took wings and be- gan to fly over the land. He recog- Bized the fact that man must have no spell in this country and act under its influence, but that he can have q misspell and grow well off
 Now, Josh Billings was really a somewhat profound person, with a good deal of Benjamin FraDklID's hap py faculty of saying wise thing in A quaint way. But they would not pass unless they were misspelled. There was no sense whatever in his misspelIing of them. They were not misspelIed in either the negro, the Irish or the Yankee dialect; 1t was nothing but arbitrary misspeiliDg without any method.
 When he obtained some currency he came down to New York City to see the other humorists and aee if they would not take him into their guild. Artemas Ward received him after his lecture with .rofuse compliments and made an appointment with him at a booksellers. Josh waited there two or three hours, until he felt that he might be kicked out and came away and saw Artemas Ward no more.
 It was the same with all the rest of then they were poor scratchers for . livelihood, getting grins out of men instead of guiDeas.
 So Josh Billings resolved to capi- tsifze his humor fin the best way he could. He sold himself to . story paper at % much week, prepared n almanac once a year and lectured